Apple Slices

NEW YORK -- Every time I come back here, someone is yelling at someone else.

This time it took about four minutes.

I had gotten off a packed flight from D.C., carrying the likes of David Dreier and Pat Buchanan, who isn't running for president for the first time since 1988. (Buchanan, by the way, thinks the Swift boat controversy has gotten so much attention because it's a great reality show, a national mystery, with new accounts or documents or secret tapes surfacing by the day. Pretty good theory.)

First problem: No taxis on a hot day. None, zero. Perhaps they hadn't gotten the word that some folks were coming to town for a somewhat important event? It's a Saturday, shrugged the LaGuardia dispatcher.

Finally split one with Lisa Todorovich, the deputy political director of ABC News, and no sooner did the cab start heading down the exit road than a large SUV swerved in front of him and cut him off. I've talked to enough correspondents in Iraq to know that this can be a dangerous maneuver, and indeed it was no accident. A rather large man emerged and started cursing at the driver that he had hit his van. The driver meekly protested that he had done no such thing. Indeed, we had heard not so much as a tap and the van had no visible scratch. SUV Man got back in his vehicle and sped off.

WelcometaNaYawk, if ya don't like it, tough. The boiling point is reached a heckuva lot quicker here.

I wondered how some delegates from Iowa might have reacted to such a scene.

The convention folks are taking fabulous care of the press so far. At the Saturday night media bash, showing off Time Warner's dazzling new Columbus Center towers, we were plied with excellent finger food and enough free booze to float the Queen Mary.

Volunteers wore orange T-shirts with slogans: "You Gotta Believe (it's a Mets thing); "Stand Clear of the Closing Doors"; "You Talkin' To Me?"

Between bites, I asked some of the esteemed journalists--what do all these people do?--what they planned to cover. National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru said, "The story is interviewing all the delegates about the Swift boats," as well as "figuring out how much conservative disaffection there is with Bush."

Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle wants to gauge the degree of enthusiasm for the Bush campaign. "In Boston, I looked out at the delegates and they didn't seem that excited."

New York Post columnist Robert George says that "unlike some Republican conventions of the past, there's more than one event or party featuring prominent black Republicans." He's also interested in Mayor Mike Bloomberg holding a Bryant Park reception for gay Republicans.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal believes that "everyone will gravitate toward the 2008 story. I'm conducting my own auditions." One applicant, he says, is Tim Pawlenty.

"Who?" a Journal colleague asked about the governor of Minnesota. Fund is also interested in Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki and, he says, "the McCain campaign is running at full gear here." I wonder if McCain knows about this. 2004, already old hat.

Fund has a point, according to this Los Angeles Times story:

"Those who know McCain well say he is not focused on the prospect of working in someone else's White House but, rather, on protecting his treasured political iconoclasm, in soaking up the adulation it brings and in keeping open the possibility of a presidential run in 2008.

"As he turned 68 Sunday, the tight-jawed former Navy pilot with the wispy white hair was the toast of Republican New York -- feted in a midday luncheon at tony '21' and celebrated that evening at an exclusive dinner with media moguls and the anchors of all three network news programs."

Dan, Tom and Peter -- who better to have on your side?

And in that hot rumor department, we turn to a site called Soxblog:

"Bill Kristol was just on FoxNews irresponsibly disseminating a rumor that he began the previous day on FoxNews Sunday with Brit Hume. Since I love the rumor and fervently wish for its accuracy, it is my pleasure, nay my responsibility, to continue its irresponsible dissemination."

Kristol, of course, is a McCain booster from way back. But does he know something?

"Reading the tea-leaves, Kristol has concluded that McCain might be poised to replace [Vice President] Cheney on the ticket. Here's the logic: After his convention speech tonight, McCain is flying out to New Mexico to hook up with the President and introduce him to the American Legion convention and then he's going to travel with the President to Nashville. Kristol wonders what could possibly occasion this flurry of McCain activity. He speculates that Bush and McCain could make an announcement together in New Mexico and then later in the week triumphantly wing their way back to New York. . . .

"Left unsaid in Kristol's analysis but clearly implicit is that dropping Cheney for McCain would be pure political gold for the Bush administration. Whether deserved or not, John McCain has become a virtual political saint in this country."

That would sure put an end to all the whining about scripted conventions.

Meanwhile, who says that New York is enemy territory for the Republicans? A taxi driver from West Africa assured me in a shouted voice worthy of "Hardball" that he's a passionate Bush supporter because of the way the president is fighting terrorism. He says his cab revenues have been down since 9/11 but he doesn't blame Bush for that.

When I walked into Madison Square Garden to do my CNN show, it seemed smaller than I remembered from all those Knicks games. Turns out the floor was raised 11 feet from where they play basketball and hockey to bring the speakers closer to the fans. The sound system got a roaring musical rehearsal during the show. Good thing I was wearing one of those Britney Spears headsets.

Want to know who the biggest media celebrity here is? Judging from the huge billboards in midtown, it's Jon Stewart. "The Most Trusted Name in Fake News," the signs say. And how many people can say that?

By the way, the police, who are everywhere, have done a nice job with security, but there's one flaw in the plan. Because the streets around the Garden are blocked off, it's nearly impossible to get a cab when you come out. That has left some people arriving at Penn Station having to walk 20 blocks, with luggage, to their hotels. For me, it meant lugging my computer and other gear into the subway, where the platform temperature was about 100 degrees yesterday. I'm a veteran of the city subways, but when you're loaded down with equipment after a long August day, you come out dripping. Memo to Bloomberg: Set up a taxi stand outside the protected zone. Do something, anything, just fix da problem.

Be careful what you say while wearing a mike. That's the lesson of this Slate piece on Bob Dole:

"The former Senate majority leader and 1996 presidential nominee of the Republican Party made several demonstrably false statements about John Kerry's war record this past Sunday on CNN's Late Edition before saying that 'not every one of these people can be Republican liars. There's got to be some truth to the charges.'

"But Dole also made another statement that day, one that hasn't been aired until now. Of McCain's charge to President Bush during a 2000 debate -- 'You should be ashamed' -- Dole told Wolf Blitzer, 'He was right.' Dole made the remark off-air, while CNN broadcast the Kerry ad called 'Old Tricks,' the one featuring McCain's 2000 debate remarks. The campaign stopped airing it recently at McCain's request.

"Although the remark was made off-air, it wasn't made off-camera. A CNN employee who asked not to be named made a digital file of the raw camera feed from the Late Edition studio."

Time for a leak investigation! Call in the Valerie Plame prosecutor!

In a Chicago Tribune column, Jason Berry rips the talking heads:

"A stench of hubris coats TV convention coverage.

"It has become media feeds, a spectacle of narcissism in which anchor folk, talk-show hosts and journalists hog the airtime by talking to one another.

"Perhaps this is a natural progression of the stereotypical script for TV news: The anchor interviews the reporter about the campaign, with a candidate's remarks clipped down to a few seconds. This stylistic frame produces a satire of news: the medium, er, reporter, is the message.

"Internet bloggers, like primeval hunters, now track the news gatherers in stories about making the story.

"Navel-gazing on the news is a byproduct of the soaring campaign budgets. The big money in TV ads that fatten network coffers help pay the millionaire anchors and senior correspondents, many of whom earn greater salaries than do congressmen and governors. The media are a mandarin class competing with lawmakers for airtime: TV salaries turn on visibility."

Well, there's always C-SPAN.

Andrew Sullivan is back in action, with some thoughts about the challenge Bush faces:

"The Republicans are right: Kerry did waste some time at his convention by focusing on biography rather than his plans for the future. He had to, in some ways, after the character assassination attempts by the Bush campaign for months on end. But that leaves Bush an opening: can he offer a truly conservative domestic agenda? I mean: reform of entitlements, a U-turn on public spending, staying the course on education reform, reforming the military, simplifying the tax code. He deserves a chance to repudiate the big-government, nanny-state, sectarian legacy of his first few years and show us where his second term would leave us (and no, I don't mean Mars).

"Will he expand freedom at home or continue to curtail it? Will he reveal a strategy in the war that shows he has learned the dangers of waging war unprepared and on the fly? Can he show an ability to grow into more than a deeply polarizing president, more than a man who has clearly failed to win over fully half the country at a time when unity against Jihadist terror is essential? The party of McCain and Giuliani and Schwarzenegger could do that. The party of Santorum and Dobson and DeLay obviously cannot. I fear the battle is already lost, since Bush has caved to the Santorum wing on almost every single domestic issue. But I can still hope, can't I?"

Ah, what an idealist.

Josh Marshall investigates a question of family ties:

"Scott McClellan went on the offensive against Ben Barnes for describing the 'shame' he feels over helping President Bush duck service in Vietnam.

" 'It is not surprising coming from a longtime partisan Democrat,' he said. 'The allegation was discredited by the commanding officer. This was fully covered and addressed five years ago. It is nothing new.'

"It turns out that Barnes is such a down-the-line partisan that he supported Texas's Republican State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn for reelection in 2002.

"Strayhorn is Scott's mom."

Ba-da-bing!

There's a new oppo site, discovered by Wonkette, called Cheerleaders for Truth:

" 'Did George Bush actually win a Varsity letter in Cheerleading at Yale? Or was this another "no show" like the National Guard?' current and alumni Yale cheerleaders are asking. 'Why haven't any member of Bush's Cheerleading Squad come forward and verified that he actually attended practice and the games?'

There's a nice picture of Bush in uniform.

Here are some fascinating misconceptions about the city, gleaned from a New York magazine poll.

What percentage of New Yorkers are Jewish? GOPers say 25 percent, NYers say 29 percent. The real answer: 12 percent.

Black? GOPers say 36 percent, natives say 38 percent, but it's actually 26 percent.

Welfare recipients? Republicans say 24 percent, and NYers say 35 percent. Slightly off. It's 6 percent.

As for millionaires, GOPers and 13 percent. New Yorkers say 20 percent. They've been watching too much Trump. It's less than 1 percent.

On the other hand, it helps to be a millionaire here. I just paid 26 bucks for a hotel breakfast of Special K, an English muffin and orange juice. A bargain compared to the tasting menu at the Alain Ducasse restaurant downstairs, which is $225. And monthly parking across the street? $350. I once paid less than that for an apartment here, but that was a long time ago.